#PiktoTour: Introducing Piktochart’s First User Event Series

When I joined the Piktochart family, we were ready to add a Community Evangelist to the mix. My role focuses on interacting with our users at every level. The goal was to uncover and develop the community that has organically emerged since the product launched in 2012. Rather than create a community, I aim to simply join it and strengthen it.

When I observe other’s work in this area, I can see there are a handful of tech companies getting this right for their users.

Our team’s favorite example is Hootsuite. Around the world, you can stumble across “Hootups,” which are local meetups organized by Hootsuite users. At these events, you’ll find people who want to meet social media enthusiasts in their area to share tips, tactics, tools and experiences using Hootsuite for social media fun and business.

Through Hootups, Hootsuite is bridging their online product and the real world. They are giving Hootsuite users around the world ownership of the brand to share the love and bring people in their local communities together. I’d argue they are making their users more engaged with their passion, even if they never touched the online product again.

How #PiktoTour Was Born

Inspired by brands like Hootsuite, Buffer, and Unsplash, our team talked about creating an event series to foster community with Piktochart users. We decided to dub the series #PiktoTour… and started getting creative.

The goal was simple – go where the Piktochart community is already thriving, see where we can add value, and let others in on the fun.

The panel discussions were full of valuable information for the entire room. One moment we were talking about online tools each person uses in their work daily, and the next we were talking about brands who were our #contentcrushes. We also opened up a Q&A session for the audience to ask the panel questions of their own, which sparked dialogue about things like building your first influencer partnership. Attendees offered feedback that they learned more about a field of interest.

For those who couldn’t attend in person, we Periscoped the event. We were excited to see 82 live viewers watched!

What’s Next for #PiktoTour?

In the end, our first user event was a success! We will be taking the lessons learned from #PiktoTourLasVegas and making our events better and better. In the next 30 days, we have three more events on deck:

#PiktoTourMelboune. We are hosting an event coinciding with our company retreat to Melbourne. We hope to see around 40 users attend an intimate dinner we are hosting, and we will also have about two dozen people from our international team at the event as well!

#PiktoTourShillong. We are testing the idea of having a passionate user host an event in his community. If we can learn to scale user led events like these, we expect to see more #PiktoTour events happening worldwide.

#PiktoTourPaloAlto. We are testing aligning our #PiktoTour series with an event focused on startups. We are being invited to demo Piktochart at a Meetup focused on emerging products. We plan to invite users in the area to come learn more about the product and connect in person with our team.

Are you interested in attending a #PiktoTour event in your city? Or maybe you are organizing an event and would like to team up with us? Where do you think we should head next? Tell us what you think of this idea!